This Is Why Fighting the Anti-Vaccination Crowd Matters

According to Wikipedia, a conspiracy theory is defined as “an explanatory proposition that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an illegal or harmful event or situation.” To me personally, a conspiracy theory isn’t simply about the cover-up — it’s about an unshakeable belief in something for which there’s no evidence, only coincidence and speculation. We do a lot of complaining around here about conspiracy theories,those who subscribe to them and who often can’t be reasoned with, and those whoperpetuate them by way of traditional and social media. We do this because believing in something without proof to back up that belief or assertion is dangerous. I’ve said it before with regard to religion, but it extends outward into the realm of conspiracy theories because both, when you get right down to it, are the same: they each require faith and conviction in the face of a complete lack of concrete evidence to prove them correct.

Why are conspiratorial beliefs dangerous? Because, as with religious faith, those beliefs aren’t benign — they influence and inform actions. Nobody simply believes something without that belief impacting the way he or she behaves. If you’re convinced Jesus is coming back soon and will judge us all, casting the unworthy into a pit of fire for all eternity, not only are you going to tailor your life to the demands of the Bible, you’ll probably also try to warn others of their potential impending doom. If you believe that the government of the United States purposely destroyed the World Trade Center and fired a missile at the Pentagon as a pretext for war in the Middle East, you won’t trust a damn thing that government does or says beyond that, and your disillusionment will almost certainly manifest in public shouts of how everybody else just isn’t seeing what you see. The end result in both of these cases, though, is the same, and that’s that you’ll prove you’re willing to forgo applying the same amount of logic and reason equally across every subject you encounter in your life. If I tell you the sky is green outside right now, you’d want to see for yourself before you believed it — but if I told you childhood vaccines cause autism, even though that theory has been debunked over and over again, maybe you’d simply take it on faith or attach confirmation bias to your inevitable bullshit Google searches.

It’s easy to point and laugh at people like Jenny McCarthy and Kristin Cavallari, idiots peddling C-list celebrity pseudoscience and mothers who believe that their ability to create life has naturally imbued them with inherent moral superiority and a mainline into some secret medical knowledge doctors just don’t have. It would be easy to dismiss their arrogance and their ongoing insemination of the national conversation with ignorance — if only it weren’t for the fact that doing so has the potential to get people killed. There are now measles outbreaks in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, as well as an outbreak of mumps in Ohio. These are diseases industrialized society hasn’t had to worry about in years, thanks almost entirely to vaccines. And now they’re on the rise again not only in the United States but in other Western countries like Great Britain, a mere transcontinental flight away from a potential pandemic in the year 2014. All because in some areas herd immunity has been compromised by parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids as directed by the CDC and its counterparts. All because of a grossly irresponsible misinformation campaign — spread, ironically, virally via social and traditional media — preaching nonsense about how vaccines are linked to autism and other childhood diseases and how the medical establishment, in collusion with Big Pharma, seeks to suppress this truth in the name of turning a profit. It’s the definition of a conspiracy theory. And stupid people are eating it up.

According to a recent study at the University of Chicago, half of all Americans believe medical conspiracy theories. 20-percent say doctors push vaccines on children knowing they cause autism; a full third claim the government is stymying natural cures in the name of making money for Big Pharma; some residents of Portland, Oregon have spent the past few years fighting City Hall to keep fluoride out of the city’s water supply beginning this year. All of these beliefs are based on crap science, heavily circulated misinformation, and a general distrust of anything resembling the “official version” of events, no matter what those events happen to be. Of the cases of measles reported in the current outbreak in L.A., nearly half chose not to vaccinate or had parents choose for them, while two of the cases in New York City were children whose parents refused to vaccinate. There’s no excuse for any of this. None. To subscribe to anti-vaccination lunacy requires a willingness to dismiss a mountain of contrary evidence while embracing a view for which there’s absolutely no evidence. What’s more, it relies on a near sociopathic disregard for the lives of other people’s children and the community at large, because the decision not to vaccinate isn’t simply a personal one — it has far-reaching and potentially very dangerous repercussions.

This is why it’s important to keep the pressure on these people, whether it’s the internet hordes pummeling Jenny McCarthy via Twitter the other day or column after column devoted to highlighting the direct role that anti-vaccination advocates are playing in the resurgence of diseases long thought conquered. There’s principle behind it: a desire to see enlightenment trump ignorance and to stem the tide of conspiracy theorist misinformation; a visceral recoiling at the notion that in the year 2014, with the accumulation of fact we can summon in an instant, there’s still a willingness to believe things for which there isn’t an ounce of proof offered by respectable sources. But beyond the abstract there’s a direct and dire reason to never given an inch to the anti-vaccination crowd: because their actions are going to cause physical harm to others for no reason other than their own ignorance.

Before you guys get all down on uneducated people being the spokesperson for the ‘you’re responsible for your health’ movement, consider Jenny McCarthy’s biggest funder is Big Pharma. They are certainly not funding any reasonable scientists who say ‘there is no longitudinal studies to show what damage occurs to the auto-immune system when 24 mandatory vaccines are given to infants before they are

Winter Skye

If vaccines are so effective, why are the reptiles soooo concerned about Jenny putting it down? You get your shot and leave us be. Because it’s an AGENDA, folks. It is about much, much more than some vaccine. It’s about microchipping the sheeple.

David L.

Damn those lizards! Perpetually horrified by the intellectual prowess of Jenny I, the Khaleesi of Immunology. Praise the Lard, at least Winter Skye is fighting with brave resistance the AGENDA of those annoying, cold-blooded members of the perfid Reptilia family.

You make Grampa ‘Abe’ Simpson look like a Nobel-Prize-worthy genius.

Steven Skelton

Don’t fuck with my precious bodily fluids.

Schneibster

Have some nice fluoride toothpaste and rinse it out with tasty and healthy fluoride mouthwash.

Schneibster

This is the nastiest, most disgusting bunch of horsepucky ever. The British “doctor” who started it with MMR has been sanctioned by the British NHS, spent time in prison, and been banned from ever practicing medicine in the UK again due to medical malfeasance.

Doctors who deny vaccination should be banned from practicing medicine. Period.

sitka74

You want to vaccinate your kids? Go right ahead. But before you scream, yell and preach from your soapboxes at parents (like myself) who choose not to blanket vaccinate their children, you should ask yourselves a few questions first. Such as:

~ Why, when 1 in 175 children now has Autism, are there no reported cases among the 30-35 thousand unvaccinated kids that Home First Medical Services (Chicago) treats? Or among the Amish? http://www.rense.com/general85/cant.htm

~ Don’t you think as a nation it may be more important to address the processed food (or rather, non-food) and child obesity epidemic than scream and yell because some parents are trying to make informed decisions, as opposed to accepting wholesale what the medical establishment (which is intrinsically tied to big pharma) is telling them to do?
~ And lastly, who are any of you to tell me what I shall and shall not have injected into my child? FUCK YOU. My children depend on me for their health. I feed them whole, unprocessed food. I make sure they exercise often. I make sure they respect their elders and their peers. I encourage them to make informed decisions and I try to lead by example. And they are two of the healthiest kids I know. There are way too many red flags involved with THE BUSINESS of vaccinations to not be selective.

Lady Willpower

“And lastly, who are any of you to tell me what I shall and shall not have injected into my child?”

You sound just like a Christian Scientist who lets their child die instead of getting them readily available medical care.
Have fun living in a flat world where cured diseases come back due to the intransigence and ignorance of people like yourself.

Schneibster

You should thank him for exposing kids who can’t get vaccines to his bullshit.

sitka74

Do I really? My children do get readily available medicare, thank you. When we travel, if the destination has a high rate of meningitis or malarial occurrence etc, they will get immunized. But, measles, rubella, chicken pox, flu shots? Come on. When I call the public health nurse to express concern about high incident rates and the banishment in some countries and states of the HPV vaccine that’s being pushed in my Daughter’s school and her response is, “I haven’t heard of that”, am I an idiot in my unwillingness to roll the dice? I’m the idiot because I’m not willing to risk damage to her brain or central nervous system?

And do any of the responders read any of the links posted above? No, all you do is write off what is there due to a URL. Dr. Buchwald’s testimony isn’t fake. His research isn’t fake. The fact that his own Son was physically wrecked by immunizations, wasn’t faked. Show me that incredibly low Autism occurrence rates among the Amish have been debunked. Show me where I’m wrong about Merck and Gardasil. Show me how Utah and Japan are wrong in banishing its delivery. And show me how the WHO and the makers of Tamiflu didn’t take your Government and many others for a very profitable ride. Show me how the rapid increase of living conditions and cleanliness in the last 60 years hasn’t played as much or more of a role in the eradication of viral infections, as immunizations.

If you all want to be sheep to your GP’s and the pharmaceutical establishment that they’re tied to, be my guest. If you want to throw every inoculation and antibiotic at your kid that your Dr. deems necessary, that’s your call. Again, more people are killed every year by pharmaceuticals, than all illegal drugs combined.

You call me irresponsible for doing my research and questioning the morality of what is without a doubt a delivery based business. You call me an idiot and a conspiracy theorist, when enough evidence and numbers are available to make any person nervous, should they care to look into it. And if you’re a parent and the idea of mandatory vaccinations doesn’t scare you, or at the very least make you look into what the implications of that are, I suggest you’re either willfully blind or you have a stock portfolio which is heavily divested in big Pharma.

Yeah, ain’t drugs great? That’s why kids and people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are getting cancer and other dis-eases at astronomical numbers. This country is so SICK as a whole! And yet you call it progress. Got meth?

Lady Willpower

You are completely insane, and utterly nonsensical.

Winter Skye

LOL- congrats on the comment with zero content!

feloniousgrammar

Find better sources. You’ll feel a lot better about the world.

Schneibster

Rense? The on-line equivalent of National Enquirer. “Vaccines cause kids to turn into Bat-Boy!” “Vaccines are an alien plot!” Vaccine cranks.

feloniousgrammar

Yeah— they’re for people who wake up every morning asking what they can do to make themselves feel worse today.

woodrowfan

and whale.to is just as bad, both are sites run by the mentally ill to fool the gullible.

woodrowfan

the Amish bit has been long debunked, and you are an idiot.

Kim Williams

That beautiful boy in my avatar is my Autistic grandson, signs were there before vaccines.We raise 90% plus of our own food, including goats, rabbits, poultry, fowl & fish.
We keep GMOs out of our food chain. We are “naturalists.” We are also smart enough to realize the science behind vaccinations for the major illnesses. There is a such thing as an educated balance.

007snipes .

Here
is the other side of the measles scare with numbers and facts and links
for anyone scared by the media If your interested or you can delete it,
btw my daughter got the measles at 8-9 months or so she had a higher
temp and loss of appetite for a couple of days then a rash for 2 days,
she got it from the doctors office http://gianelloni.wordpress.com/…/thanks-pharma-you…/

Aaron Litz

Wow, what a nauseatingly saccharine little website. All it was missing was some doilies along the edges and a few teddy bears in the corner.

The BS she wrote uses the same kind of selective acceptance of facts and ignoring of opposing evidence that climate change deniers and 911 Truthers use. And that holocaust deniers use, for that matter.

feloniousgrammar

We might want to be a little more cautious. It’s important to recognize that some people do not benefit so much from some vaccines.

When I was in rehab because I couldn’t walk, I met a man who had gotten polio from an unfortunate batch of polio vaccine in the seventies. We both agreed that it was unfortunate and that people should be vaccinated. Dismissing and denying real harm that has been done is no more scientific than vilifying vaccines.

It takes some maturity to accept both, and it wouldn’t hurt to recognize that most humans are very protective of their offspring. What needs to be made clear as that the health of other children affects their children, and that studies and data aren’t always correct or crystal clear. There’s nothing particularly wrong with people not having an understanding of that and not appreciating epidemiology; but it’s really the scientists and industry (drugs and vaccines are commercial product, not just the fruits of pure science) to teach people how to think responsibly about vaccines and to tighten up their own ship.

feloniousgrammar

Also, the world of science really isn’t doing so well, right now. From experimercials for psychoactive drugs to “sociobiology” to the MRI mania of bullshit imaging, there is much to be skeptical of that critical scientists are calling out in their fields. Preaching blind and indiscriminate acceptance of scientific studies, perspectives, and conclusions isn’t all that scientific. Denying this simply gives more fuel to those who can’t believe that it’s best to vaccinate.

Jenny McCarthy should be charged for this. Every person that believes her and follows her bullshit and their child gets sick and dies from a preventable disease should be charged. She has blood on her hands and I’ll never support her again or forgive her for this.

These anti-vaccine people should never set foot in a hospital. Because if vaccines are a scam, how do you know that everything the doctors give you isn’t a scam? Stick to your guns, people.

http://www.BarnesFamily.com/ davebarnes

At age 65, my crappy teeth wish that the Commies had poisoned our water supplies much earlier.
At age 65, I am thankful that about how few people I have known in my lifetime that were affected by polio. To a child in the 50s, the movies of children in iron lungs was horrifying.

http://cendax.wordpress.com/ Norbrook

As someone who actually had mumps, measles, rubella, and chicken pox, I can state that they’re far and away worse than any vaccine. The people peddling this crap have no idea of what they’re letting people in for. My evil thought is it would serve them right to have their children have them, and see what they could have avoided.

feloniousgrammar

I’ve had whooping cough, which I don’t remember but hearing my mother and paternal grandmother talk about it convinced me that it was truly horrific and tortuous for them to hear me cough like that. I’ve had mumps on both sides, which was no big deal, but why not not have the mumps when that’s an option?

Chicken pox, measles, and rubella can kill adults, but some of those vaccines have also caused deafness in children in the past. I knew a woman whose child was born stone deaf because of a vaccine. That wasn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a documented fact.

Vaccinations for everyone for whom they aren’t contraindicated is best, and better still is for the medical field to study the effects and epidemiology of vaccinations and to work on improving them, without denying that they can be harmful to individuals.

The odds are high that in the case you’re using as an example, she had a modified live virus vaccine while pregnant, which might have caused this. For example, I heard someone say their child got measles after being vaccinated. From their description, the child was already in the incubation phase for measles, and the vaccination had not had time to take effect. It takes 10-14 days for the immune response to happen, so if the child “gets the disease” 7 days later, then the vaccine wouldn’t have been protective.

One of the pernicious myths that has arisen over the past few years is the idea that things should be “perfectly safe.” There is no such thing, and vaccines are no different. There is, however, relative risk. The risk of side effects from vaccines is at least an order of magnitude, and more usually several, less than the actual disease. For those who simply cannot take the vaccine for various reasons, they need to rely on herd immunity, which the anti-vaxxers are removing. Equally bullshit is the idea of “immune system overload.” Every single day we – and every child – is exposed to far and away more immune challenges than are in any single vaccine.

There are quite a few working on improving vaccines. “Epidemiology of vaccinations” is a meaningless term. You do epidemiology of diseases, and there have been numerous studies that show that when vaccination rates against a disease reach a threshold percentage, the disease rate drops. In some cases (smallpox) it disappears entirely.

feloniousgrammar

One of the pernicious myths that has arisen over the past few years is the idea that things should be “perfectly safe.”

Right, and by the same token, the actual risks and dangers need to be acknowledged. Informed consent is absolutely necessary. Why would an intelligent person not want to be given the truth so that they can make up their minds instead of being lied to? I have no problems with unvaccinated children being refused all public services and private services that don’t want to be responsible for infectious kids. But informed consent should not be optional.

Women who can become pregnant and who have not had the MMR vaccine in the past should have a blood test to see if they are protected (immune). If they are not immune, they should receive the MMR vaccine. Women should not receive this vaccine if they are pregnant or planning to become pregnant within the next 4 weeks. The vaccine may harm the baby.

WHO SHOULD NOT GET THIS VACCINE

Persons who received a dose of MMR and developed an allergy from it.

Persons who are severely allergic to the antibiotic neomycin (MMR contains a tiny amount of neomycin).

Women who are pregnant (women should not become pregnant within 1 month of receiving MMR).

Persons with a weakened immune system due to certain cancers and their treatment, HIV, steroid medicines, or other medicines that suppress the immune system.

Persons who are ill with something more severe than a cold or have a fever should reschedule their vaccination until after they are recovered.

I think unvaccinated children shouldn’t be allowed in school and if they go and another child gets sick because they had denied them herd immunity their parents should be sued into the stone age.

donzaloog

Agreed.

feloniousgrammar

I agree. With rights come responsibilities. People who act contrary to the public good and harm others in the process need to be put in check. As a caregiver and as a person I’m serious as hell about epidemiology. When the SEIU organized caregivers and gave most of them health insurance, they remedied what should have been an obvious public health threat and a cruel irony. I’m all for strict quarantine when necessary, too. No one has the right to infect others with infectious diseases that can be prevented on behalf of their “freedom” or “liberty”.

For those who are harmed by a vaccine for whatever reason, public funds should be used to give them whatever medical care they need as a result of it; and they should be compensated monetarily. Fair is fair. But anyone who doesn’t vaccinate for whatever reason, need to be isolated within reason from environments with a large population of children, pregnant women, the elderly, people who are immunosuppressed, and others who are vulnerable to life-threatening infections. The effects that measles has on children, seems minor to some parents who would rather their children got it for the benefit of natural immunity, but its effects on adults and the vulnerable can be devastating.

Schneibster

You can get measles on your eyeballs. That’s generally permanent damage and scarring of the eye and functional blindness. I recall it being about one in a hundred cases. I don’t believe I’m off by an order of magnitude.

Annie Snyder

Post Polio Syndrome is awful. My MIL has it, and so did the lady we bought our house from, who could no longer live in the dream retirement house she built with her husband because it has stairs.

dbtheonly

Chez,

The fluoridation debate goes back at least 50 years when it was a, “Communist threat to destroy our precious bodily fluids”. (as mocked in “Dr. Strangelove”).

So do the conspiracy theories ever go away?

Acharn0

Just so. That’s part of what Gen. Jack D. Ripper was talking about when he explained that he protected his “vital bodily fluids.” And in my opinion the anti-flouride people were the ones who were giving money to The Moral Majority and the John Birch Society. I was there, and they really were crazy. And they caused a huge amount of damage.

Schneibster

My avatar is the Redoubtable Gen. Jack with the machine gun from the wall of his office, firing over his desk with his cigar waving, and in the lower right corner can be seen Mandrake, barely daring to raise his head high enough to peek over the windowsill, trembling in all limbs and in reasonable fear for his life as he tries to keep this maniac from deciding to shoot him. That’s me.

ChrisAndersen

Oregonian here. My most vivid memory during the recent fluoridation debate was getting into a “discussion” about it with the former head of the Portland area Democratic Party. She was firmly against fluoridation and based much of her arguments on logic that would have appealed to tea partiers and libertarians (I don’t want government to shove this stuff down my throat.)

http://batman-news.com MilkAndWookiees

If you told me the sky was green, I admit, I’d go to a window and look. Not because I don’t believe you, though, but rather because I’d be looking for funnel clouds. Green skies are an indicator that conditions are conducive for tornadoes.

dbtheonly

And a very unpleasant view that green sky is.

swift_4

The sky will often be green for a very brief period during sunrise. It’s kind of cool, and way less threatening.

MilkAndWookiees

Isn’t that when the souls of the dearly departed pass to the realm of death or something? ;)

swift_4

If there’s a certain time when that happens, then I’d say it’s the most likely time.

Christopher Foxx

In a 2008 interview with Larry King, McCarthy asked, “Isn’t it ironic, in 1983 there were 10 shots and now there’s 36 and the rise of autism happened at the same time?”

Isn’t it notable, in 1983 there were 10 shots and now there’s 36 and the rise of the Internet happened over the same time?
Isn’t it telling, in 1983 … and the dissolution of the Soviet Union happened over the same time?
Isn’t it meaningful, in 1983 … and the spread of the minivan happened over the same time?
Isn’t it interesting, in 1983 … and the eruption of Kilauea happened over the same time?

Clearly vaccines are responsible for Facebook, the current crisis in Crimea, the death of the station wagon and volcano.

Draxiar

What she has to understand is that correlation does not imply causation.

woodrowfan

and are her numbers even correct? Did it rise from 10 to 36??

Christopher Foxx

and are her numbers even correct?

A very good question. I wondered about that but didn’t want to spend the time researching it. Given her track record, it’s more than likely she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

And even if her numbers are correct, an increase doesn’t equate to it being a bad thing. Once there were no vaccines, and then we had some. An increase from 0 to 10 (her starting point) means there’s 10 (or more) illnesses people are far less likely to get. A rebuttal to McCarthy could be “Only 36? But there are a hundred things we’d like to vaccinate against. We need at least 64 more.”

Maike Hudson

Don’t forget the decrease in pirates.

Aaron Litz

But decreasing pirates causes global warming!

kushiro -

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a measles shot.

feloniousgrammar

Maybe Obama will, in the end, be let off the kook’s hooks because vaccines. He was vaccinated. Isn’t that ironic.

Annie Snyder

I hope her kids send her a well written thank you note when they have their first bout of shingles when they hit 40.

Christopher Foxx

Some trolls are just so obviously crying for attention that they shouldn’t be fed at all, folks.

Winter Skye

And some trolls are paid shills for Big Pharma and the reptilian shadow gobermint, folks.

Winter Skye

You are such a shill. 9/11 WAS staged and vaxxes ARE dangerous. Go shill somewhere else. This is not journalism.

David L.

Yup. I know for a fact that Mr. Pazienza wrote this shilly piece directly from his $109-million luxury yacht, compliment of Pfizer, Inc.

Winter Skye

No. You two probably did a hot tub, a few lines out of Uranus, and then brokebacked each other before he wrote this.

Wow, no “media” type was ever embedded at a website! I sure do have egg on my face!

kushiro -

No, that’s the result of your anti-vaccine group bukkake sessions.

Winter Skye

LOL–I love it when shills start getting vulgar. Means I’m getting to them…Heh heh…Now speaking of bukkake, don’t you have a load to empty on your mom’s face, Cletus? Funny that a load could come out of a golf pencil…

kushiro -

Winter, stop thinking about my dick. I’m not going to fuck you. I have a pharmaceutical company to run.

Sabyen91

Um…you are the guest. Perhaps you should go somewhere else. Whackjobs won’t last long here.

Winter Skye

Oh NOES!!!! An anonymous person called me a whackjob on an article shilling for vaxxes. I am so insulted! LMAO!

Sabyen91

OH NOES!!!! You believe silly crap and are anti-science! LMAO!

Bubble Genius

You should seek psychiatric help as quickly as possible. CHEMTRAILS!!!1!

villemar

Brain!!

feloniousgrammar

Stop vilifying people who have been diagnosed with psychiatric problems; most of them don’t believe in chemtrails and lizard people. Their disturbances are very real and personal— even those who suffer from the occasional florid psychosis are often consumed by actual trauma they’ve actually suffered and not the random grab bag of conspiracy theory.

Winter Skye

That was BRILLIANT! Never heard it before! Sooo original!

(Now I know you’re a stinking shillbot. Everyone with eyes can see that those are CHEMtrails and not contrails polluting our skies, Adolf.)